By Smart Material Solutions, Inc.
Smart Material Solutions, Inc. (SMS) recently won the Army XTech Clean Tech Competition and a Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant to use nanocoining and R2R NIL to manufacture light-trapping, self-cleaning coatings that increase the efficiency and reliability of thin-film solar panels. Thin-film solar panels can be lightweight and flexible, making them easy to transport and deploy. SMS will increase the performance of these solar panels by adding nanopatterns like those shown in Figure 5 to solar panels and demonstrating their light-trapping and anti-fouling properties. After the creation of prototypes in Phase I, SMS plans to partner with a solar company to roll-to-roll manufacture panels with self-cleaning, light-trapping coatings during Phase II of the project. Light-trapping microfeatures patterned in polymer using nanocoining and nanoimprint lithography at SMS include pyramids, inverted pyramids, microlens arrays, and hierarchical features with nanofeatures on top of microfeatures.
